


The Attempt At The Bridge, 46

by Charolastra



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Angst, Broken Bones, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Héctor Rivera Deserves Better, Héctor Rivera Needs a Hug, Medical Procedures, Pain, Skeletons, Tía Chelo is a Sweetie, the abuela we all want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23699167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charolastra/pseuds/Charolastra
Summary: Héctor stumbles back into shantytown after another failed Día De Los Muertos, where he and a kind resident have a heart to heart.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	The Attempt At The Bridge, 46

It was Chelo, a woman totally foreign to the young man, who surprised him by nestling her shoulder into the space between his arm and ribcage. She must have seen him stumbling, hobbling on the one leg and makeshift cane.

" _¿Necessita ayudar?_ " Asked the older woman, a playful gleam in her eye. Héctor merely nodded and shifted his weight to little Chelo's outrageously strong shoulders. Words did not need to be exchanged to reach a mutual understanding, then; Just as well. Héctor didn't want to divulge his latest failure. 

Chelo guided Héctor back to her slipshod bungalow. Her brittle skeletal arm curled around the taller man's waist– or rather where it would be if he were still of flesh and muscle–mainting his balance. After much struggling over the threshold, the duo sat down on the dust-frosted floor, Héctor laying out his halved tibia.

"How did you do it?" 

She was onto questions before a silence could even take hold. Héctor looked away from her wise eyes, suddenly ashamed, even childlike, in the presence of the older woman. The raggedy man had been dead longer than her, but what did that matter, when Chelo had lived 70 some years? None. She had survived a dozen revolutions in her time, technological and governmental both, but Héctor _had_ to croak after a piece of bad meat.

"Trying to cross the bridge. I think."

"You think?"

"It's been a little wonky for a while," explained Héctor. A far away look glazed his eyes into pinkish-red saucers. "I must've been buried wrong, or something. Either way, _s_ _eguridad_ grabbed me and I hit it on the concrete. It broke on my way he–...home." 

Yes. This was home now. This was where the hopeful forgotten and other fading live-in-the-now's hunkered, so this would be his home. Presumably for quite a while. Four years and counting.

Chelo hummed aloud, breaking his trance. Héctor watched her shift and stand, uncertain, and disappear behind a blanket hanging from the ceiling. When she returned it was with a thin roll of duct tape in one hand, a half-empty tequila bottle in the other. "It's no splint, but I think it'll work, if you can't pay the doctors." 

Chelo's mirth leaked through her thin voice, much younger than her grey locks marked her for. To her dismay it didn't draw a smile; So she sat in front of him, commanded him to straighten the pieces of his halved shin, and set to no-nonsense work.

It wasn't a difficult procedure, duct taping the bone, but it was painful brushing off tiny chips of the stuff, lining up the haphazard ridges, and probing for other potential fractures, hence the need for tequila. Héctor sucked in air through his teeth, eyes shut, the vertebrae in his spine trembling with his efforts to keep still. Chelo, noting the audible rattle, frowned.

" _Yo sabe_. I'm sorry. I'm almost done. Will you hold this in place?" 

After a third shot of tequila, Héctor obliged to move his detached shin bone closer to the break line. Though it forced a string of vile curses from him, he held fast; Chelo fixed a swath of tape over the crack and layered the silver stuff almost a quarter of an inch thick, then let go like the limb were a hot pan.

"There," Chelo proudly declared post-examination of her work. Not the best, but manageable, as she would later say. For the first time since they'd met, she gazed up at poor Héctor; the brilliant purple of her eyes reminded him of wildflowers.

"You did good. Better than others." The old auntie twisted to get at the brown bottle behind her, asking, "How about a little more for the pain?" which the scoundrel accepted graciously.

This sort of kindness was foreign in the commons of the Land of The Dead. The remembered held fast to the old values of life: consumption, capitalistic work habits, even the latest societal pressures to thrust on themselves, their _amigos_. It made Héctor sick with anger, no, _fury_ , seeing so many people would not let life be enjoyable even life after death. The posturing only served as a bad aftertaste of what they left behind in the living world. 

The forgotten had no such hang-up. How could they, when all that they had was already gone? If they started forgotten, if they fell into its waiting clutches after a few good years, it still had a way of humbling the proud; of soothing the self-conscious; kneading the anxiety from the best of ruminators. Status was not in the forgotten's vocabulary. 

Looking at Chelo, Héctor couldn't gauge how she had landed in Shantytown. She had a reputation around the little tent city as a spitfire, quick with a giggle, quicker to polish off a bottle. Her dusty gray bones were lined with faux wrinkles around her nose and cheeks, crow's feet dancing beside her eyes when she smiled. He could imagine what a lively young woman she had been. What a beauty she had been when alive.

Chelo allowed the young man the last shot, and on completion of the bottle returned it to the shelf. She stretched high, skirt rising around her knees, phalanges wiggling above her head until she released with a satisfied groan. Héctor accepted her help in rising. " _¿Bien?_ " 

A few stamps on the rickety floor proved strong enough to manage without falling. Chelo beamed with pride once again, though to his relief she spoke nothing of what he owed behind her genuine smile. 

"Thank you," Héctor gushed as she ushered him out, insisting he run around a bit to test the leg's integrity. "Really, _señorita. Gracias."_

To which Chelo only guffawed, flicking the brim of his straw hat. 

"No one's called me _señorita_ in years!" she chastised, though Héctor could see the blush on her cheeks. "Everyone here is your _prima_ or _tía_ , Héctor. You're family, not a stranger." 

The raggedy skeleton's hesitant smile told more than words could how much he needed a family; how much he depended on having people to please and laugh with. Chelo remembered enough from her arrival to know how great the fall from grace was, and how astonishingly healing it was to find a shred of stability in the aftermath.

Héctor left her with a final expression of gratitude and turned back down the wobbling docks, equally as grateful that Chelo couldn't see the way his eyes began to mist.


End file.
